52 THE PROTEOMORPHIC THEORY A*TD THE NEW MEDICINE 



since the direct ancestors of men branched from a common stem 

 with the direct ancestors of the gorilla. There has been no blend- 

 ing of blood in the intervening centuries. Cats have been cats 

 and dogs dogs from geological epochs so remote that we hesi- 

 tate to guess their span in terms of years. So the intimate chem- 

 ical qualities that denote man or ape or cat or dog, each in con- 

 tradistinction to all the others, must have been transmitted 

 unmodified through countless thousands of generations. 



It taxes credulity to believe that such intangible properties 

 could be transmitted unmodified through the blood streams of 

 such myriads of individuals ; but the evidence of the test-tubes 

 proves that this has been done. 



What makes the marvel greater is the fact that the bodies 

 of the animals have meantime been so modified as to develop 

 utterly divergent species for example, the lion, the tiger, the 

 puma, the leopard, and the house cat; different types of dogs, 

 wolves, foxes, and their allies. But in each case some intangible 

 quality of the blood remains unchanged to prove the common 

 origin. Blood is indeed thicker than water. 



THE SOURCE OF SPECIFIC ANTIBODIES 



In making the above presentation of the experiments showing 

 the specificity of proteins, I have drawn on the text of one of 

 my popular books, Miracles of Science, which appeared not 

 long before the original publication of the Proteomorphic theory. 

 I have thought it well to present this detailed account of the 

 precipitin experiments, because they bear so fundamentally on 

 the essential problem of the protein response in therapeutics, the 

 elucidation of which is the chief purpose of the present book. 



These experiments make it clear that the phrase "non-specific 

 proteins," notwithstanding its convenience, is in the final anal- 

 ysis a misnomer. Proteins may be used non-specifically, but no 

 two are precisely alike. Making present application of this prin- 

 ciple, and recalling that the single enzyme trypsin is observed 

 to begin the digestion of many types of protein, it must be sup- 

 posed that the exact steps of the successive metamorphoses are 

 somewhat different in each case. It is even possible that there 

 are various types of the enzymes that now go by the name 

 trypsin, each one adapted to deal with a different protein. But 

 this is only conjectural, as the chemistry of the enzymes is still 

 very obscure. 



Be that as it may, however, it is certain that each type of 

 protein undergoing parenteral digestion and assimilation evokes 

 from the digestive mechanism a unique response, which finds 

 expression in the secretion into the blood stream of specific types 



